A Dictionary of Untranslatable Selves
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
saudade (n.) - The pain of loving what remains only as a shadow in other languages. First symptom: dreaming in Portuguese but waking with the taste of Japanese rain on your tongue. Second symptom: homesickness for a country whose borders shift with each word you forget. Third symptom: writing letters to yourself in languages you never learned, signed with names that aren't yours but feel more familiar than your own heartbeat.
Insomnia (n.) - Not knowing which version of yourself will shatter when the sun rises, whether it will be the person who hates monsoons, who thinks a night sky doesn't compare to the size of your regrets, or the girl who wants to run away, feel the cold rain seep into her shoulders like achingly delicious poison, dreaming sighing waking: all the colors of the sky, all the long, red tears of the river.
Soliloquy (n.) - The sound your own voice makes when you're the only one who can hear it. It never slips anyone else's lips: not a sweet hello or a goodbye kiss.
Hibiscus (n.) - An end in both French and Sanskrit. The sound of flowers wilting. The sound of rain falling on the sand that's slipping between your fingertips. The sound of your body releasing its demands for physical love, until you are nothing but skin, and sin, and bone.
Selkie (n.) - A new kind of metamorphosis, this time from one form of flesh and blood to another. A woman who sheds her skin. ...A woman who sheds her skin but by diving back into the waters paints it back on the surface. A woman who sheds her skin but by diving back into the waters builds a home from the pieces. A woman who sheds her skin◆ About the ending
❧ About the title